This is the official blog of Sgt Ellie Bloggs, a real live police sergeant on the front line of England. It's not the official opinion of my police force, but all the facts I recount are true, and are not secrets. If they don't want me blogging about it, they shouldn't do it. PS If you don't pay tax, you don't pay my salary.

PCSOs are just a rather cynical government ploy along with the likes of Teaching Assistants at creating a sub-professional strata which is far cheaper, not to mention less well represented by traditional trade unions and other professional bodies, which can over time, beginning with the more mundane tasks, take on more and more of the role of the professional.

The Government wanted to look good by having an increased police prescence and better teacher to pupil ratios but didn't want to meet the cost of employing more professionals. This was their soloution, tried and tested in the NHS wich has had Nurses, intended to support Doctor's, and then Auxillary Nurses who are unqualified.

The problems are many. Firstly the professionals feel threatened. I remember working at the Post Office many years ago as a temp. I was often asked if I'd thought about becoming a 'Proper Postie.' In this setting I was doing an almost identical job however, the small differences, such as lack of uniform and lack of a permanent round, led to the existing staff protecting threir position from low-cost casual labour by inventing this term 'Proper Postie' which accentuated the differences between them and the temps and which suggested that the temps were doing a less skilled job. Interesting that Robert Mitchell makes a similar play about being a "proper Police Officer." Now I'm not suggesting PCSOs do the same job, but it just shows there is a similar kind of sentiment existing between existing Officers keen to protect their roles from intrusion by differentiating.

Other problem. People doing these jobs often get a raw deal. Low pay and low status are joined at the party by a protracted career ladder i.e anyone wishing to become a Police Officer needs to put in the time as a PCSO.

Sad thing is they are actually more expensive to employ than Cops in the short term. In my farce they're on about £19K a year but due to health and safety reasons have to be double crewed most of the time so thats £38k doing half the job of 1 Cop on £35k. Another prime example of utter incompetance shown by this Labour Government.

I post articles to provoke debate, inform my readers, but more usually just to entertain. The fact that comments can be posted on my blog is great for feedback, entertainment, and the occasional bizarre stalking episode, but ultimately what you infer from my posts about my real opinions and feelings is up to you!

Hmmm... while these are hilarious, I do tend to jump to the support of PCSOs. They do different work from police officers, which frees PCs up to do the work that they are trained and paid to do. I don't like to see PCs wasting their time on tasks that a PCSO, PSO or civvie controller like me could be doing.

Some of our PCSOs do excellent work, and are an incredible mine of information and intelligence on our regular scrotes and their mates.

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